Art of the Weimar Republic
(Germany 1919-33)
by Gabriel Tordjman, Winter 2011
Warning:
Some of these images contain
graphic depictions of violence
Art of the Weimar Republic
(Germany 1919-33)
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Timeline
World War I (1914-1918)
German Revolution (1918-1919)
Weimar Republic (1919-1933)
Nazis elected to power (1933)
World War II (1939-45)
World War I (1914-1918)
Trench Warfare
http://www.harris-academy.com/departments/history/Trenches/GillianR/Gillian%202.htm
World War I (1914-1918)
Battle of the Somme: Trench Warfare [1916]
http://www.freeinfosociety.com/media.php?id=3655
World War I (1914-1918)
David Swanson, “Abandoning Torture But What About War?”, LA
Progressive, 10 Feb,. 2009.
http://www.laprogressive.com/war-and-peace/abandoning-torture-butwhat-about-war/
Otto Dix, Stormtroopers Advancing
Under Gas (1924)
Metal on Metal,
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_O0ch3ABb3L4/TD6yDveCN5I/AAAAAAAAB1M/dTq32PIb21s/s1600/attachment.jpg
Otto Dix, The Trench (1920)
Metal on Metal, http://metalonmetalblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/otto-dix-horror-of-war.html
Kathe Kollwitz, Killed in Action (1921)
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTkollwitz.htm
Kathe Kollwitz, Deutschlands Kinder Hungern! (1924)
Alexander B. Downes (dept. Pol. Sc. Duke)
http://www.duke.edu/~downes/courses.htm
George Grosz, Grey Day (1921)
ABC Gallery http://www.abcgallery.com/G/grosz/grosz-9.html
George Grosz, Dusk (1922)
Ineedartandcofee,
http://ineedartandcoffee.blogspot.com/2010_10_01_archive.html
Otto Dix, The Skat players (aka Card playing war
cripples) (1920).
Ordinary Finds,
http://i12bent.tumblr.com/post/266751631/herr-otto-dix-goesgrotesque-the-skat-players
Weimar Republic
Hyperinflation (1923)
German children playing with worthless money
In 1922 a loaf of bread cost 163
marks. By September 1923 a loaf
of bread cost 1,500,000 marks.
George Grosz, Eclipse of the Sun (1926)
Madame Pickwick Art Blog
http://madamepickwickartblog.com/aesthetics-ofnihilism-death-as-a-ready-made/
George Grosz, Pillars of Society (1926)
George Grosz, The Agitator (1928)
ABC Gallery http://www.abcgallery.com/G/grosz/grosz-2.html
Weimar Republic
Hitler during the “Beer Hall
Putsch” (1923). This was the
Nazis first (failed) attempt at
seizing power.
Weimar Republic
After years of political instability
and economic problems,
Germany, along with much of
the world suffered through a
devastating Great Depression
beginning in 1929.
http://econ161.berkeley.edu/tceh/Slouch_Purge15.html
The Great Depression
Famous photograph by Dorothea
Lange of Florence Owens and her
children outside a migrant workers’
camp in California during the Great
Depression.
Nazis Come to Power
It was under these
conditions, when huge
numbers of people lost
their jobs, that Hitler and
the Nazi party came to
power in Germany in
1933.
Nazi electoral propaganda
posters for the 1932
German election.
"Workers: The Brain and the Fist! Vote
for the frontsoldier Hitler!" (source: The
Rise of the Dictators: 1919-1939 by
Peter Banyard. Gallery Books, New
York City. 1986, p. 18.)
"Fight hunger and despair! Vote for
Hitler!" (source: "An Exhibition of
German Posters," May 8 through June
15, 1963, New School for Social
Research, New York City.)
http://www2.facinghistory.org/Campus/weimar.nsf/ID/A50A6DC98BE7438885256CDE00581D88?OpenDocument
In 1939 World War II broke out.
World War II
Nuremberg, Germany, April 1945
Kathe Kollwitz, Nie wider Krieg! [Never
again War] (1924)
The End